Practice Teaching

After about six weeks of interviews and observations, I am finally able to start “practice” teaching! Even though I have had quite a few years of teaching experience in the US, it would have been foolish to assume that I would have been able to just step into a South African classroom and start. It was important for me to begin to become familiar with both the culture of the school as well as the culture of the students in the classroom. While there are certainly quite a few similarities (after all, kids are kids no matter where you are in the world) there are some important differences that I observed as well.

• In the vast majority of cases, the learners do not take any notes or write anything down. They simply listen to the teacher’s explanation or watch the work that is being done on the chalkboard. The writing does not come until they are asked to do their own class work. Therefore, if you look through a learners notebook, all you will see is a few problems here and there from various days when they had an assignment to either do in class or complete at home.

• The learners do not except to be singled out. They expect to be asked yes or no questions and respond as an entire class rather than individuals. The question that they seem to hear the most often is “Do you understand?” The answer from all sixty students is simply “yes.”

• If you do make a learner answer a question on his or her own, he or she must stand up when giving the answer. This may not seem like a big deal, but it is amazing how much time is wasted when you have to wait for a learner to get up out of their chair and then sit back down again. Especially when all you want is for them to say “five.” And it is especially frustrating when the answer is given is wrong – which it often is.

• Materials in the form of published workbooks are provided to the learners, but they are not given textbooks that have explanations and examples…at least not that I have seen. Truth be told, there are a lot of locked cabinets in the back of many of the classrooms.

• Neatness is extremely important in every learners exercise notebook – almost too important. An abundant amount of time is wasted finding rulers to draw perfectly straight lines under the heading at the top of the page, or the line at the end of an addition problem, etc. I of all people value being neat and organized, but this is an extreme that overshadows the actual content being taught.

There are other differences, too, but these were the ones that caught my attention the earliest. I need to tread lightly as I try to modify some behaviors and just try to adjust my own mindset to some others. But in the end, I think it is going to be a great couple of weeks of sample lessons. I know that both the learners and I are excited to get things going!